My new variety of lily plant originated as a seedling which first flowered in Woodland, Wash., in 1987. The breeding efforts had as their objective the production of large-flowered completely upfacing Oriental hybrids in a variety of shades of pink, with deeply pigmented papillae, suited to forcing into flower out of season, heretofore unknown in the lily breeding art.
I achieved the desired objective by intercrossing unnamed upright and semi-upright Oriental seedlings which carried pink flower color and were also suited to forcing for year-round use as cut-flowers. The unnamed Oriental seedlings which were the parents of `Rose Paramount` were produced by me, from a series of crosses among seedlings which were selected in my fields from large seedling populations of my own crosses. The original crosses came from material unique to my own breeding lines and not available in the trade. The field-selected seedlings were genetically very diverse, and 100 seedlings were selected for their outstanding vigor, stem length, pink flower color, and upfacing or semi-upfacing flower orientation. These were forced into flower under glass, and the 25 seedlings which showed the best forcing performance were then randomly intercrossed to produce a large quantity of seed. This seed was grown to flowering size, producing a large population of seedlings, from which the best 100 were again selected for vigor, stem length, pink flower color, and upfacing or semi-upfacing flower orientation. These were subsequently tested for their forcing performance, and `Rose Paramount` was selected as one of the seedlings best suited for forcing as a cut-flower.
The flowers of my new lily are characterized by a completely upfacing orientation, large size, broad tepals with inner tepals noticeably overlapping, unusually thick substance, distinctive even medium pink, deep pink papillae confined to the basal third of the tepals, and green nectaries with yellow papillose margins, a combination unique among Oriental hybrid lilies. The variety possesses unusually strong, stout stems. In addition, the clone possesses to a high degree desirable characteristics of hybrid vigor. The clone is a good grower and propagator, as observed as Woodland, Wash.
My new variety of lily plant has been asexually reproduced by me and under my direction at Woodland, Wash. Successive generations produced by natural propagation from bulblets, by bulb scale propagation, and by tissue culturing from bulb scale explants have demonstrated that the novel and distinctive characteristics of my new variety are fixed and hold true under asexual propagation from generation to generation.